Baris Gül

Really great to see this: six Nobel Prize-winning economists (Duflo, Krugman, Diamond, Banerjee, Acemoglu and Stiglitz) just came out in favor of the California billionaire tax. You don't have to be a radical leftist to see why it's a good idea. First, look at the numbers: ten years ago, the richest 0.001% of Californians were worth $700 billion. Today, that same group (about 250 people) is worth $2.3 trillion. From 2019 to 2025, their wealth grew by $1.4 trillion. The California income tax they paid over that period was just 1.6% of that gain. A nurse or a plumber pays a higher state tax rate. Yes, many of these people built great companies, and they've made a lot of money in the process. Good for them! The problem is that wealth on this scale stops being just money. It becomes extraordinary power. In 2000, billionaires accounted for about 1% of all donations in federal elections. In 2024, it was 19%. The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the LA Times, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and the platform you're reading this on: all owned and controlled by billionaires. Now add AI. If you think power is concentrated now, just wait five years. It's going to get much worse. So, what does Prop 40 actually do? It's a one-time 5% tax on the wealth of California's billionaires. That would raise about $100 billion, enough to offset the federal Medicaid cuts. "But they'll all leave!" the critics say. Nope, they can't. The tax applies to any billionaire who lived in California on January 1, 2026, and the initiative only became public about five weeks before that. "But it'll kill Silicon Valley!" Uh no, that won't happen either. Since the tax was announced, California's share of all new US venture capital has gone up, from about 50% to 80%. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who would be one of the biggest payers, said he would be "perfectly fine" with it and had "not even thought about it once". Sure, some other billionaires can't stop thinking about it. Sergey Brin has already spent more than $100 million to defeat the proposal. At a holiday party in December he pulled Gavin Newson aside and said 'he could not stand the state’s proposed billionaire tax', because he thought the 5% tax would turn California into some kind of Soviet Union. That is, of course, nonsense. This is not going to be some kind of socialist revolution. The proposal is about restoring balance to a mixed economy. You could even argue it's about saving capitalism itself from oligarchs like Sergey Brin. I think that's exactly why Nobel Prize-winning economists are coming out in favor of this tax. If Prop 40 passes in November, it will be the first tax aimed specifically at billionaire wealth anywhere in the world. I think it could be the start of a global movement. Anyway, read the whole letter here. It's really good 👇 gabriel-zucman.eu/files/prop…

This is such an insane fact. Whenever you eat chicken, anywhere in the world, you're probably eating one of just two breeds: a Cobb 500 or a Ross 308. They are the product of decades of R&D by two companies (Cobb-Vantress and Aviagen), resulting in an insane growth rate. A normal chicken can naturally live for a decade, but Cobb 500's and Ross 308's regularly collapse and die before they even reach slaughter age (when they're still babies). And they don't stop growing at slaughter weight. The birds keeps ballooning until the heart and legs give out. So if you simply let a Cobb 500 or Ross 308 keep eating the way it's bred to eat, most don't make it past a few months. Even rescued birds that get careful management (literally being put on diets) can reach at max 1 to 3 years. So we've built a bird that can either eat or survive, but not both. A hundred years ago, we had many hundreds of breeds. Every region had its own - the Barred Plymouth Rock, Rhode Island Red, Wyandotte, New Hampshire, Jersey Giant,the Orpington, Sussex, Dorking, Cornish Game, etc. These animals took about four months to reach a kilo or so, foraged outdoors, and could fly reasonably well. We now just endlessly slaughter tens of billions of Cobb 500's and Ross 308's every year. They are the most numerous birds in the history of the Earth. Geologists have even argued their bones will be the defining fossil of our age...

The board that fired him? Replaced. The safety team that questioned his priorities? Dissolved. The nonprofit structure that was supposed to keep mission above profit? Restructured. The employees who wanted to speak out? Silenced — or bought out. xitter.gq/rcbregman/status/20316…

Publishing this in newspapers across Europe. This boycott is just getting started.

This is a huge opportunity for Europe. Welcome Anthropic with open arms. Roll out the red carpet. Visa for all employees. Europe already controls the AI hardware bottleneck through ASML. Add the world's leading AI safety lab and you have the foundations of an AI superpower.

This is the most important thing happening in the world right now. The administration wants killer drones + mass surveillance of Americans. Anthropic refuses to build it. While most tech companies fall in line, they are prepared to pay the price for their principles.

I increasingly think the Democrats need an insurgent economic populist to take over, the way Trump took over the Republican party. Here's a possible candidate: Erica Payne, CEO of @PatrioticMills. I've rarely seen someone fight for working people with this much fire and authenticity. Put a social media team like Mamdani's around her and I'd be VERY curious to see what would happen. This is her recently at the IMF.